Salt & Vinegar Chips. Spitting Chips. Sour Grapes.
Take your pick.
I'm talking about how pissed off China is that the largest high-end chip-maker in the world, TSMC, has done a deal with the United States to make their chips there. Beijing are super pissed off.
How do they show their anger? Reveal their saltiness? Display they're spitting chips?
Why, through the voices of pro-Beijing columnists in the South China Morning Post, of course! There's plenty of them these days.
The most pro-Beijing, the most of a sock-puppet for Beijing is long-time columnist Alex Lo. Who writes two days ago, in his column: KMT Chief shows way forward to avoid blind confrontation with Beijing. [Internet Archive page]
Taiwan’s political pendulum is reversing. The government led by Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) William Lai Ching-te is increasingly discredited, not least for selling out the jewel of its semiconductor industry to the United States under pressure from President Donald Trump.
"Selling the family jewels"?? Hardly. They're increasing Chip capacity by manufacturing in the United States. Does it make sense? Surely it does.
America is the largest customer of TSMC by a long way. America takes some 75% ot TSMC's output. Next largest customer is Taiwan itself with 9%. Only then comes China, with 8%, a figure that's actually fallen in recent years. IOW America takes ten times the amount China does of TSMC's output. Of course it makes sense to manufature some of your product in your dominant customer's home.
Committing some $US 500 billion to build facilities in America is just smart.
But it smarts for China too. This is not TSMC "selling family jewels". It's TSMC being smart.
ADDED: My post on TSMC: the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
Who's TSMC? From Grok:
TSMC produces the vast majority of the world's most advanced semiconductor chips (over 90% of leading-edge nodes below 5nm or so), which serve as the foundational "brains" powering everything from smartphones and consumer electronics to AI accelerators, high-performance computing, data centers, and modern military systems.
Without TSMC's manufacturing capacity and technological leadership, global supply chains for AI innovation, digital infrastructure, and countless high-tech products would grind to a halt, making the company a critical chokepoint for the modern economy and technological progress.
In short, TSMC is the indispensable engine behind today's digital world and the AI revolution.
